1.Prologue
In this series so far I’ve covered how electronic dance music emerged in America in the 80s as an underground movement. In the early 90s it sparked the Second Summer of Love in the U.K., which led to the development of many different genres and subgenres throughout Europe. Nightclubs and raves served as gathering places as well as wellsprings from which these movements spread. While the call to come together would largely fall on deaf ears on the U.S. (it wouldn’t be until the 2010s that electronic dance music went mainstream), it had a profound impact on Japanese nightlife.
Disco culture had taken root in Tokyo in the 70s, and the 80s saw the opening of a string of high-end discotheques. Maharaja opened its first venue in Osaka in 1982, and by the time Maharaja Tokyo opened as its seventh venue in 1984, the disco craze was fully underway. In 1989, a large capacity club called Shibaura Gold opened, modeling itself on the New York house music sanctuary Paradise Garage. In 1991, Juliana’s Tokyo also opened in Shibaura, and quickly became the epitome of early 90s bubble era excess. The music being played at early 90s discos was mostly euro disco imported from Europe.
One of the masterminds of the disco/club scene of the early 90s was Avex head Max Matsuura. Matsuura had started Avex as a wholesale distributor that sold imported dance records to rental record shops in Japan. Amid the disco craze, he repackaged euro disco as “eurobeat", and even released a series of compilation albums for Maharaja and Juliana’s Tokyo, helping spread the gospel of dance music in Japan.
Avex had a secret weapon up its sleeve: producer Komuro Tetsuya, whose music sold millions of records for the company. Avex and Komuro also opened Velfarre, billed as Asia’s largest disco, in the Roppongi neighborhood. In its heyday, the venue served as Tokyo’s main hub for eurobeat and trance music.
Meanwhile, Juliana’s Tokyo also drew crowds from the rural areas around Tokyo. Because the music was too fast to dance to in a conventional way, distinct dance moves were developed among the scene, best known among them being para-para, which mostly involves upper body movements. The dance spread like wildfire among so-called gyaru and ko-gyaru. In the 2000s, Avex repackaged epic trance from Europe as “cybertrance", releasing a series of compilation albums that made sure trance continued to be big business in Japan.
In this way Avex played an indispensible role in spreading trance music and making dance music commercially successful in Japan. It also helped pave the way for hip hop and breakdancing culture to take root, with artists like Amuro Namie, Koda Kumi, and the dance/vocal group Exile.
In this article I will cover the Japanese club and raves scenes in the 90s and 2000s.
2.After the End of the Disco Craze
A number of Tokyo’s popular nightlife hubs would shut down in the mid-90s. The discotheque Juliana’s Tokyo closed in 1994, while the nightclub Shibaura Gold closed in 1995. The meet market Maharaja Tokyo closed in 1997, signaling the end of the disco craze in Japan. At the time of its closure, Gold had a roster of regular DJs that would go on to lead the Japanese club scene, such as Emma and Kimura Ko—two figures strongly influenced by the gay discos and house music of New York and Chicago. After Gold closed, they would start up their own club nights at different venues around Tokyo, heralding a shift in the nightlife scene from specific discos to specific club night organizers and promoters.
One of the most important nightlife hubs of the second half of the 90s was Club Complex Code, located in the Shinjuku Toho Building in the Kabukicho neighborhood. Code opened in 1997 as the successor club to a disco named Xenon, and drew crowds of close to 1,500 partygoers on weekends. Emma and Kimura Ko were regulars, and the club also hosted big-name DJs from abroad, like Ferry Corsten and Tiesto. The Shinjuku 2-Chome location also meant that Code quickly became a hub of gay culture. Unfortunately, Code closed in 2008, and the entire building was demolished and rebuilt. Today it is a Shinjuku landmark best known for the Godzilla head on the roof that watches over the city.
In the second half of the 90s, the Maruyamacho area of Shibuya also became a center of Tokyo nightlife. In 1996, Culture of Asia opened a live music venue called Club Asia, followed by a hip hop/reggae club called Vuenos in 1998. Further up the street, the club Harlem opened in 1997 and quickly became the epicenter of black music in Shibuya. In 2000, Womb opened its doors right in the middle of an area populated by “love hotels", with legendary house DJ Junior Vasquez on the decks for the opening night. It quickly became one of Tokyo’s most internationally renowned techno/progressive house clubs, regularly hosting the likes of Sven Väth, Sasha, and John Digweed.
One of the most important nightclubs in Tokyo during the 90s was Space Lab Yellow. Space Lab Yellow opened in Nishi-Azabu in 1991, focusing on the house sounds of DJs like Kimura Ko, but also hosting parties by DJs like techno god Ken Ishii and psychedelic trance wizard DJ Tsuyoshi. The venue became known for its events catering to beauticians/hairdressers and the gay community. Murata Daizo, who produced the venue, has said that he wanted to create a place to cultivate a kind of music culture that was distinct from “white" and “black music; with this club he set out to redefine the derogatory term “yellow". The club closed its doors at the end of June 2008. A successor club called Eleven opened at the same location in 2010, but it too shut down in 2013.
In 2002, a large-capacity multi-purpose entertainment facility called Studio Coast opened in Shin-Kiba, away from the city center. On weekends, organizers such as “Mother" hold club nights under the Ageha name catering to fans of trance, house, techno, EDM, hip hop, and more. The venue has a main floor, a bar and lounge area, an outdoor pool and beach area, and food trucks. While it’s a little out of the way, it operates a shuttle bus between Shin-Kiba and Shibuya.
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3.Japanese Rock Music Festivals
One of the most influential figures in modern Japanese music is Hidaka Masahiro, the head of promoter Smash—and the visionary behind the Fuji Rock Festival. A psychedelic rock-loving hippie, Hidaka was one of the central figures behind the Atomic Cafe Music Festival, an anti-nuclear power art event held in the mid 80s. In 1987, Hidaka visited the Glastonbury Festival in the U.K. for the first time, and was highly moved by what he saw. Feeling that it was still too early to start such an event in his native country, he kept returning to Glastonbury every year afterwards, all the while slowly formulating plans and searching for potential locations for what would become the Fuji Rock Festival.
The first event was held in 1997 at Fujiten Snow Resort along the northern base of Mount Fuji. Originally planned for two days, the main headliner was the Red Hot Chili Peppers but the lineup also included electronic dance music acts like Aphex Twin, Massive Attack, and the Prodigy. Perhaps Hidaka envisioned the event as more like a dance music rave than a rock concert. A typhoon rocked the festival on the first day, and while there were no deaths, a number of people needed medical attention after collapsing from the cold and exhaustion. Combined with access problems and damage caused by the typhoon, Hidaka made the tough decision to cancel the second day.
The following year Fuji Rock Festival was held in Toyosu Ward in Tokyo. Hidaka and the other organizers had learned from their mistakes and made sure the event was easy to access; however, the location’s proximity to central Tokyo meant that they only had space to set up two stages. Hidaka resolved to return the event to its original vision of “a music festival in nature". Since the third iteration in 1999, Fuji Rock Festival has been held at Naeba Ski Resort in Niigata Prefecture. The event features five main stages and various other smaller stages, a food area, a campsite, and flea markets, with light displays, a casino, and bars at night.
The success of Fuji Rock Festival would pave the way for Summer Sonic and Rock in Japan Festival, which both launched in 2000. Summer Sonic an urban music festival is organized by Creativeman Productions, and is held over two days in Chiba Prefecture (just outside of Tokyo) and Osaka; the musical acts perform at one site on the first day and then at the other on the second day. Headliners are typically overseas musicians, but the event has also featured J-POP and “idol" performers since the late 2000s. Most of the music is either rock, pop, or hip hop, but acts like Daft Punk, the Prodigy, Fatboy Slim, and Justice have also proved to be big draws. Since 2011 the festival has held the EDM-oriented Sonicmania on the eve of the festival.
Rock in Japan Festival is organized by the publishing company Rockin’on, headed by music critic Shibuya Youichi. Shibuya started a magazine called Rockin’ on in 1972 with the goal to introduce Japanese audiences to Western rock music; the magazine was not successful from a business standpoint but was highly valued among some readers for its music criticism. Shibuya would be more successful with Rockin’ on Japan—a magazine focused on the Japanese rock music scene that launched in 1986. The magazine’s readership was bolstered by a burgeoning rock band scene in the early 90s and the Shibuya-kei scene of the second half of the 90s. Taking more than a little inspiration from Rolling Stone magazine, the company began to publish more articles on Japanese subculture scenes. Rock in Japan Festival’s lineup features predominantly Japanese rock and J-POP acts, and has grown from a two-day event in 2000 to a five-day event in 2019.
The rise of these rock music festivals and their success in finding corporate sponsorship would become an important case study for promoters and record companies overseas. Even in the U.S., where electronic dance music had always been an underground scene, promoters took note and applied the lessons Japan had learned to a handful of electronic dance music festivals that were founded around the turn of the millennium. In the 2010s, their efforts would come to fruition as EDM invaded mainstream music.
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4.The Peak of the Japanese Rave Scene
In 1998, Hidaka’s company Smash launched a free rave called Harukaze in Yoyogi Park. Originally conceived as a private hanami flower viewing party for the crewmembers working behind the scenes of Fuji Rock Festival, the Kyoto Conference on Global Warming in 1997 inspired them to turn the event into something bigger. Initially the event featured mostly world music and ethnic music acts, but the programming gradually shifted to electronic dance music, with people like DJ Tsuyoshi helming the decks. The event went on hiatus between 2002 and 2008, but was relaunched in 2009 as SpringLove Harukaze, an anti-war event bringing together a rave, flea market, and food stalls. The 2020 event was cancelled because of COVID-19, but the organizers have conducted a number of live music streams.
The spread of rave culture and trance parties in Japan was in large part facilitated by the organizer duo Solstice Music. Trance DJ Chika and hip hop DJ Akira met as exchange students in the mid-90s in Canada, and having nothing better to do, they began regularly hosting house parties. After returning to Japan, the duo leveraged their English skills to connect with the Israeli trance scene, and began hosting trance parties in Tokyo. In 1999, they launched the Solstice Music Festival, which would grow into a major outdoor psychedelic trance rave drawing crowds of more than 10,000 people. Raja Ram, who had been working as a studio musician up until that point, made his debut as a DJ at the 2000 edition; psychedelic trance band Shpongle performed live for the first time at the 2001 edition. The event would go on hiatus for several years starting 2008 due to the global decline of the psychedelic trance scene, but since 2015 the festival has been held a number of times, alongside a number of club nights. Chika and Akira also played a central role behind the Fatboy Slim-inspired Big Beach Festival, which was held at Makuhari Seaside Park between 2009 and 2013.
The organizers Vision Quest also played an important role in fostering the Japanese rave scene between the late 90s and 2000s. Vision Quest held the large-scale three-day outdoor rave “The Gathering" between 2001 and 2008, which hosted legendary performances by acts like Hallucinogen, Infected Mushroom, and DJ Tsuyoshi.
No survey of the Japanese rave scene would be complete without mentioning Yoji Biomehanika. Born in Kobe in Western Japan, Yoji started DJing in and around Osaka in the early 90s, and came to the attention of DJs like Paul Oakenfold and Paul Van Dyk with his single “Rendezvous De Telepathy", which was released on a German trance label in 1994. The increased exposure led him to start hosting his own club nights, and his parties at Velfarre were especially popular. He started his own label in 1998, and established an international reputation in 2001 after performing at the outdoor festival Dance Valley in the Netherlands. Yoji’s sound is harder and more frantic than regular trance, and has been categorized as hard trance, NRG, and hard dance. He has also released a number of popular mix CDs through Avex Trax.
While the hippies and neo-hippies that were into psychedelic trance preferred more ethnic-inspired fashion styles, Yoji Biobehanika inspired a new breed of raver with his outlandish style. Color-tinted sunglasses, baggy pants, and glow sticks became standard attire. The style would also be influential on later artists like the Nakata Yasutaka-produced Perfume, and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu.
Other notable raves include Ishino Takkyu’s techno festival Wire, and techno DJ Mayuri’s outdoor festival Metamorphose. Mayuri, who had experienced the Second Summer of Love firsthand in the U.K., started DJing and organizing her own events after returning to Japan in the early 90s. In 1992, she started Odyssey, an early outdoor psychedelic trance rave that lasted for a few years and would pave the way for later raves. In 2000, she launched the techno/dance music festival Metamorphose, which would grow into a major attraction drawing 20,000 people annually. Metamorphose has been on hiatus since 2013.
5.Epilogue
In this article I’ve provided an overview of the major rock festivals and raves that led the Japanese music scene in the 90s and 2000s. The commercial success of these (mostly) legal events would usher in an era of large-scale music events designed to be profitable.
Up until then, music festivals had not been particularly commercially successful. So many people showed up at Woodstock in 1969 that the promoters ended up letting in most of them for free, and the event did not turn a profit until the 80s—thanks to a concert film, merchandising, and licensing. Glastonbury Festival in the U.K., which also served as a model for Fuji Rock Festival, became profitable in the 80s, but it is said that most of the profits are donated to charity.
In the early 90s, raves in the U.K. were held in abandoned warehouses and empty fields, and entrance was often free. Turning a profit was never part of the plan for initial rave organizers; that being said, increasing criminal involvement would lead to the U.K. government to crack down on the scene. Goa beach parties were, naturally, free. Techno parades like Love Parade in Germany got their start as political demonstrations. Fuji Rock Festival, Summer Sonic, and Rock in Japan Festival were among the earliest events that took an explicitly commercial approach.
In Japan, outdoor raves also played an important role in helping the scene grow into commercial viability. While traditional rock festivals are all about the performers on stage, a rave is about the attendees. People wear colorful fashions, costumes, and body paint, and show up not to watch bands or mosh, but to dance. The music continues through the night, accompanied by a visual element: VJ performances, lighting, lasers, decorations, and more. Often the music is not the only main attraction, with food stalls, flea markets, and art installations and exhibitions also taking place on the festival grounds. In other words, a rave involves the building of a community, and the philosophy and values of the organizer play an important part in determining the direction of the event. In this sense, Fuji Rock Festival is more accurately described as an outdoor rave or art festival. The secluded location also makes it feel more like Burning Man than Glastonbury Festival.
The Japanese rock festivals I’ve introduced in this article are still going strong, and have even become a popular attraction for foreign tourists in summer. Meanwhile, the rave scene went into a steep decline in the second half of the 2000s. As psychedelic trance became big business, criminal groups became involved and started taking advantage of the events. A big part of that involved the distribution of drugs, which led to a number of overdoses and deaths. The Japanese government began to crack down on the club and rave scenes, and even deported some foreign promoters. In the late 2000s, Harukaze, Solstice Music Festival, and The Gathering all went on hiatus for one reason or another.
Meanwhile, promoters and record companies in the U.S. took the lessons that the Japanese had learned and started putting the wheels in motion to turn electronic dance music and rave culture into a mainstream phenomenon. Just as the Japanese club and rave scene went into a decline, the American EDM scene began to rise.
